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Thankful for where we live

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The Thanksgiving holiday should remind us we have a lot to be thankful for. As a business person I have to say working in the Hill Country is a blessing. Our economy has not taken the beating some areas of the country are experiencing. Businesses are opening up and new building is abundant, especially commercial construction. No project in the area is bigger than the Cedar Park Center, and they began putting up the steel last week.

It was even reported in the Austin paper that our unemployment rate had skyrocketed up to 4.8 percent, a terrible thing. This is high for recent times in this area but it is two points better than the national average. We seem to be dodging most of the bad economic news others are experiencing.

My Thanksgiving wish is that people will remember this economic crisis and learn that living on credit has always been a risky proposition. However, I am not hopeful our government will learn this lesson about credit until it is too late. The bailouts, those already authorized and those waiting for approval, will eventually send this country into a depression. The federal government has borrowed and spent to fix every problem it has been confronted with for years.

This Monday some of the nation's home builders asked the federal government to help them out as well. The proposal would be a tax credit up to $22,000 to be used to purchase a house. Also, home builders are asking the government to buy down the interest rate new home buyers would pay, down to 3 percent. These programs would be paid for by people like you and me who are gainfully employed and pay our taxes. The fact that this idea is even being considered is alarming.

I hope we are still able to say we are thankful next Thanksgiving, but if we keep borrowing more money to pay for more bailouts there will come a day when we are not thankful.

My father-in-law, Sam Thompson, passed away a few years ago and he never owned a credit card. Sam was not a wealthy person but he had no debt when he died. He often expressed concern that this country would one day pay the price for always living on credit. I know if he was alive today I would be hearing, “I told you so” - probably over a big Thanksgiving turkey.

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